Little evidence exists in the literature for how to manage clients who self-harm within low, medium and high secure forensic wards, despite the identified high rates of self-harm within these services. This study sought to investigate the management practices used with clients who self-harm in low, medium and high secure forensic wards, how helpful staff consider these practices and what understanding staff have of the reasons for which clients self-harm. A Delphi survey methodology was employed across three rounds using a multidisciplinary cohort of forensic ward staff, across low, medium and high wards. Physical management strategies were reported as most frequently employed to manage self-harm. Relational approaches to managing self-harm showed the highest rate of consensus for their helpfulness in practice. Consensus was reached across numerous domains explaining reasons for self-harm, including as a ‘communication of distressing feelings’. Statements indicating a negative view of self-harm such as ‘to manipulate staff and gain attention’ received consensus of disagreement. Psychological models and approaches used by clinical and forensic psychologists in the cohort were identified, and helpful elements of these models were identified, including ‘positive focus of approach’ and ‘emphasis on relational working’.

M.A. (Clinical Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Phil. (Industrial Psychology) / The objective of this study was to determine the psychologist-lawyer dynamics, prevalent in the psycho-legal activities of industrial psychologists. In order to reach this objective, repertory grid interviews were conducted with 10 participants, all of whom were industrial psychologists experienced in psycho-legal activities. During the interviews, the participants were asked to contrast their experiences in terms of the psychologist-lawyer dynamics, by eliciting similarities and differences between the psycho-legal cases which they identified. From the contrasts obtained in the interviews, the data were analysed in three consecutive stages, namely eyeball analysis, bootstrapping analysis, and the interpretation and sense-making of the themes. In the first stage of analysis, the repertory grids of the participants were scanned holistically to identify personal constructs. In the second stage of analysis, the personal constructs were categorised into themes, based on a process of continual scrutiny for similarities. During the final stage of analysis, the seven themes, categorised from the personal constructs of the participants, were interpreted and made sense of by using relevant literature on forensic psychology. The seven themes categorised from the data were: differing scientific worldviews of industrial psychologists and lawyers, the power differential in the psychologist-lawyer relationship, motives of the instructing lawyer, structure of the psychologist-lawyer relationship, the industrial psychologist's fees, objectivity of the industrial psychologist, and ethical principles in psycho-legal activities. Based on the seven themes, recommendations are made to important stakeholders such as industrial psychologists, the Professional Board for Psychology, lawyers instructing industrial psychologists, and universities. Furthermore, important limitations of this study are noted, from where recommendations for future research are made. Recommendations for stakeholders and future research in terms of the psychologist-lawyer dynamics in industrial psychologists’ psycho-legal activities are aimed at mediating the interdisciplinary and inter-professional dynamics between industrial psychologists and lawyers, in order to aid the sustained practice of industrial psychologists’ psycho-legal activities.

This study aimed to create the first measure of risk for UK gang-affiliation. A pilot stage invited gang affiliated and non-gang affiliated participants between the ages of 16–25 to retrospectively self-report on 58 items of risk exposure at the age of 11. Based on performance of these items, a 26-item measure was developed and administered to a main study sample (n=185) of gang affiliated and non-gang affiliated participants. Categorical Principal Component Analysis was applied to data, yielding a single-factor solution (historic lack of safety and current perception of threat). A 15-item gang-affiliation risk measure (GARM) was subsequently created. The GARM demonstrated good internal consistency, construct validity and discriminative ability. Items from the GARM were then transformed to read prospectively, resulting in a test measure for predictive purposes (T-GARM). However, the T-GARM requires further validation regarding its predictive utility and generalisability.

This study investigated the effect of cognitive factors on competency to stand trial. Previous researchers have investigated how psychological variables --such as psychosis and intelligence--contribute to incompetency. Although several researchers have established that intelligence contributes to incompetency, very few have investigated the role of specific cognitive abilities within the realm of intelligence. This study investigated the performance of 55 defendants referred for competency restoration on neuropsychological measures. Specifically, competent defendants and incompetent defendants were compared on several measures assessing functioning in seven cognitive domains. Competent defendants performed significantly better than incompetent defendants on measures of verbal comprehension, social judgment, verbal memory, and executive functioning. Competent and incompetent defendants did not differ on attention, visual spatial skills, or nonverbal memory.

Prisoner recidivism is a problem of great social importance, as recidivism represents a failure of the rehabilitative goal of incarceration. The problem addressed in this study was the lack of accurate estimates of race as a predictor of recidivism risk in the United States, after taking demographics and criminal variables into account. Applying the life-course theory of recidivism, the purpose of this archival, epidemiological study was to calculate whether recidivism risk varied based on race, across different seriousness levels of commitment offense and number of prior arrests, among a sample of male federal prisoners released from custody. A Cox proportional hazards ratio was applied to determine both the statistical significance and the magnitude of being Black, rather than White, as a predictor of recidivism in six distinct scenarios. Analysis indicated that Black prisoners were more likely to recidivate in some instances, whereas White prisoners were more likely to recidivate in other instances. The results of the study can assist psychologists, parole boards, and other stakeholders in more accurately estimating the role of race in recidivism risk. The results of the study were that race is a significant risk factor in some kinds of recidivism, but not in others, and also that being African-American is not universally associated with higher recidivism risk. The results suggest that race might be a less prominent recidivism factor than previously thought.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious public health concern. Existing interventions for male IPV offenders (i.e., Duluth Model with CBT principles) have shown small-to-negligible effects in reducing future perpetration of violence and have high dropout rates. Offenders who fail to complete treatment, or are deemed to be at “high risk”, are sent to jail. Efficacious and acceptable interventions for incarcerated IPV offenders are needed. The objective of this dissertation study was to test the feasibility of implementing an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) skills group with incarcerated IPV offers. The ultimate goal of ACT is to help individuals make behavioral choices in the service of their values, despite the presence of unwanted internal experiences, through the use of acceptance and mindfulness skills. The specific aims of the study were: 1) to examine post-treatment effects in the targeted ACT skills (i.e., present-moment awareness, acceptance, defusion, experiential avoidance), internalizing symptoms, and externalizing behaviors; and to test whether treatment effects were moderated by IPV-related criminal history severity (IPV-CHS); 2) to explore participants’ perceptions of the group; and 3) to examine whether pre-treatment IPV-CHS predicted worse ACT skills and greater symptom severity at pre-treatment. A sample of 33 court-mandated IPV offenders who participated in the 1 month ACT skills group (12 sessions, delivered 3 times per week) and who completed self-report questionnaires at pre and post treatment was used to evaluate the first two aims. The sample used to evaluate aim three consisted of 58 participants who had completed either the ACT skills group or another treatment offered at the jail at the time (treatment-as-usual) and for whom pre-treatment data were available. Quantitative results revealed that ACT did not produce significant pre to post changes in any of the outcome measures (i.e., ACT skills, internalizing symptoms, and externalizing behaviors), that IPV-CHS did not reliably moderate treatment effects, and that IPV-CHS did not predict worse ACT skills or greater symptom severity at pre-treatment. Qualitative results, however, revealed that participants viewed the ACT treatment favorably, found the material useful, and felt accepted and understood by the facilitators. The present study provides evidence for the feasibility of administering a standardized ACT-based protocol within a correctional setting. It further demonstrated that incarcerated IPV offenders perceived ACT to be an acceptable and useful treatment approach. The quantitative data, however, do not support the widespread dissemination of this ACT protocol with incarcerated IPV offenders at this time. Future research should follow-up on these discrepant findings by testing this ACT protocol with a larger sample, randomizing into ACT versus control group, including multiple follow-up time points, collecting one-year recidivism data, and exploring the effects of longer treatment and alternate forms of delivery (e.g., combination of individual and group sessions). Strengths and limitations of the study, as well as additional recommendations and directions for future research, are discussed.

Broad personality or global traits are unlikely to assist in solving capital crimes, so forensic psychologists have begun to focus on characteristics of the crime to create differentiating profiles. The purpose of this study was to determine if offender and victim characteristics and method of murder could provide cluster profiles differentiating familial relationship between offender and victim. Guided by classical conditioning theory and social learning theory, an archival database of 147 capital offenders responsible for 506 victims was analyzed. Cluster analysis yielded 3 distinct profiles. Compared to other clusters, Cluster 1 offenders tended to be Black and unfamiliar with their victims, who tended to be male between 20 and 50 years old that were typically shot. Cluster 2 offenders tended to be White and familiar with their typically female victims under the age of 20 who they typically murdered by use of blunt force or strangulation. Cluster 3 offenders were distinguished from the other 2 clusters only by having accounted for 90.6% of all victims who were stabbed, but no other associations with variables in the data set were discovered to explain this finding. Though limited in sample size, range of variables, and supplemental insights that could have been gained from case files or interviews, the results contribute to positive social change with offender-victim characteristics and method of murder profiles that begin to differentiate the familial offender-victim relationship and that future research can prospectively build on to create retrospective profiling models, which could potentially lead to resolving unsolved serial murder cases.

There has been a significant amount of research on the impact of stress and job satisfaction amongst employees in a multitude of professional settings, including the criminal justice and higher education field. Yet, information on criminal justice professionals who work in more untraditional types of higher education institutions, such as career colleges, was lacking. The purpose of this quantitative research study was to examine whether there is a significant relationship between stress, job satisfaction, and being employed as a criminal justice department head within a career college institution and compare whether heads of other departments within career college institutions differ in terms of these relationships. Selye's stress model and Spector's model of job satisfaction were used as the theoretical framework. Nonexperimental quantitative survey data were collected from 77 department heads and instructors who worked in career college institutions. Participants were selected using a nonprobability convenience sampling procedure. The data were evaluated using discriminant analysis. The overall results showed no significant differences in the relationship of stress and job satisfaction between criminal justice department heads and instructors and their counterparts in other academic departments. Further in-depth research regarding the individual work-related experiences of these professionals could be beneficial in gaining a holistic understanding of criminal justice professionals who transition to higher education. With more knowledge, employers within this sector of higher education may be able to better evaluate institutional practices and develop more effective intervention and training programs aimed at improving retention and job satisfaction, as well as, igniting a change in the negative image that is often times associated with career college institutions.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is currently known as the silent killer among combat veterans who have served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation New Dawn. Many combat veterans do not know or understand that they may be suffering from mental illness/disorders such as PTSD and turn to maladaptive behavior, resulting in criminal justice involvement (CJI). The goal of this study was to assess a relationship between PTSD and CJI among combat veterans. This study used cognitive behavior theory to understand the relationship between PTSD, CJI, and combat. This study used a predictive correlational design and statistical analysis of retrospective archival data (N=146) provided by the Department of Veteran Affairs to find the correlation between PTSD, CJI, and combat. The 5 research questions were: Does PTSD positively predict CJI in combat veterans? Does criminal history pre combat positively predict CJI in combat veterans who have PTSD? Does combat trauma experience positively predict CJI in combat veterans with PTSD? Does deployment length positively predict PTSD in combat veterans? And do multiple deployments positively predict PTSD in combat veterans? This study determined that PTSD did not significantly predict CJI and that criminal history did not predict PTSD. However, this study did predict that multiple deployments and length of deployment does predict PTSD in combat veterans. This study provides a way to bring change to how veterans are treated in the criminal justice system. This is important for many reasons, such as the positive social change it will have on the veteran community through providing insight on the changes that need to be made in PTSD awareness education and possible change in assessment and treatment of PTSD.